Each year, the U.S. Departments of Education and State designate a week to spotlight the importance of international education. “International education enhances cultural and linguistic diversity and helps to develop cross-cultural communication skills, foreign language competencies, and enhanced self-awareness and understanding of diverse perspectives,” this year’s statement reads.

At SIT, we welcome this opportunity to focus on the importance of the work we do year-round. And there is no better way to highlight this work than through the voices of our students and alumni.

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Halle Catalina Brown studied abroad on SIT Ecuador: Comparative Ecology and Conservation in 2019. That experience was so foundational that she continues to blog about it and the Ecuador connections she made during her time there.

Ecuador study abroad excursion feels like an ‘unimaginable, wild dream’

My heart sank as I observed the destruction of some of the most wild and beautiful nature I’ve ever seen and the deep suffering of the people.

“I fell in love with the Amazon,” Halle writes in this blog post. “… Oftentimes, I would remind myself that the nature I was exploring has only been seen by a countable quantity of eyes. Possibly countable only on my fingers and toes. Which is the reason I find it so important to also provide education on the ways we are destroying this wildness.”

She goes on to describe in detail the shocking corporate and government practices that are destroying natural resources and local communities. “My heart sank as I observed the destruction of some of the most wild and beautiful nature I’ve ever seen and the deep suffering of the people. And we are all to blame.”

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It’s no doubt that the pandemic has challenged our students’ ability to physically cross borders and experience other cultures in person, but that hasn’t deterred many students who are intent on enhancing their international education and expanding their world view.

Chile virtual internship offers new ‘vantage point’ on social change

I learned a lot about Chilean culture and was able to experience it from a close perspective …

In fall 2020, Spelman College international studies major Alix Swann joined SIT for Chile: Virtual Internship in Education & Social Change Organizations. “At first, I was apprehensive about the online experience, but it ended up being incredibly impactful,” Alix told us. “I learned a lot about Chilean culture and was able to experience it from a close perspective, as well as work with an organization who does a lot of work for women’s rights on the ground.”

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University of Arkansas Honors College Fellow Meghana Chithirala, a pre-med junior, had planned to spend the summer polishing her language skills in France. When the pandemic interrupted those plans, Meghana joined SIT Kenya: Virtual Internship in Public Health in the Tropics.

SIT virtual internship with Kenyan hospital offers insights on public health

This internship was honestly one of the greatest opportunities I had been given.

Meghana’s rotations—in an HIV clinic and pediatrics, critical care, and neonatal units at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu—were an eye-opening introduction to public health, as well as the benefits of online internships. “I was exposed to a multitude of issues in the Kenyan health care system and how third-world countries are trying to utilize their limited resources,” Meghana wrote.

“This internship was honestly one of the greatest opportunities I had been given,” she concluded.

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Gretta Marston-Lari was born in Peru and came to the United States with her parents as a young teen. A Latin American studies and theater major at Macalester College, Gretta returned to Peru with SIT on a program focused on indigenous communities and globalization.

Semester in Peru inspires musical

I felt that I was finally learning what I had been longing to learn in all of my college courses.

“I felt that I was finally learning what I had been longing to learn in all of my college courses. … The study abroad experience fed my soul in a way that was really needed and that I had been waiting for since I left Peru at age 14.”

As her final project, Gretta wrote a musical, Como la Tierra (“Like the Earth”) that tells the story of an indigenous community’s struggle to block a copper mine. “We had been learning a lot about how indigenous bodies of knowledge exist in an oral tradition. To me, theater in a large way is an exchange of knowledge, and it’s oral. I thought this was the best way I could connect to what was happening and to contribute to further their struggle,” she told us.

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During an exceptionally challenging year, Danielle Purvis earned her MA from SIT in Climate Change & Global Sustainability, a one-year global program that includes a semester each in Iceland and Zanzibar.

‘The ways of this world must change‘

… we get to be on the front lines of building new bridges and creating a new way of life.

“On top of the typical challenges of a graduate degree, the Class of 2021 completed their degrees entirely or almost entirely during a global pandemic. My cohort, for instance, experienced a lock down, then an evacuation, and then a lock down and an evacuation,” Danielle told her graduating class during a moving speech at her commencement in August.

“I am completing this experience with a blend of gratitude for the resources available to me and a commitment to see these bountiful resources distributed as equitably as possible. I am completing this experience with a global lens of how we are inextricably connected to each other and to our natural environment. And I know, more than ever before, that the ways of this world are unsustainable and must change, and that we get to be on the front lines of building new bridges and creating a new way of life,” she said.

There are plenty of musicals that reference serious social justice issues. Evita confronts authoritarianism, Kinky Boots examines gender identity, and The Sound of Music broaches the Nazi occupation of Austria. But instead of coming away with indignation, audiences are more likely to be humming the show-stopping musical numbers that often sugarcoat the underlying themes.

With Como la Tierra (“Like the Earth”), SIT Peru alumna Gretta Marston-Lari has written a different kind of musical—one that defies expectations of how the genre normally looks and sounds. The play was shaped by her experience on SIT Study Abroad’s Peru program, Indigenous Peoples and Globalization. Gretta tackles hard truths— sexual assault, death, domestic violence, police and military violence, and exploitation of women—through a story that intertwines women’s resilience with the earth.

The play is based on events that were happening during Gretta’s 2019 semester abroad in Peru, where local communities opposed the Tia Maria mining company’s $1.4 billion copper mining project, fearing it would pollute the environment and do little for the local economy.

In the play, Juana Puyka, a campesina from Arequipa, is organizing her community to defend their valley from the mining company that wants to exploit and pollute it when Salvador, a criollo man from the city, embarks on a mission to make Juana his.

Originally written in Spanish, the musical was staged in English last spring at Macalester College, where Gretta has just graduated with a double major in theater and dance and Latin American studies. In 2020, as a Lin Manuel Miranda Family Fellow, Gretta participated in a playwright’s intensive at the National Theatre Institute’s Summer Program, and a New York City theater company has now picked up the script with plans to stage the musical next summer.

Although she has participated in many theater productions, staging her own original musical was both “phenomenal” and challenging, Gretta says. “Collaborating with and inviting so many other people into this world—that I didn’t create, but channeled—was interesting. I wanted to make sure everybody understood what we were representing on stage and that’s difficult because not everybody went to SIT.”

As it turned out, current events helped cast, crew, and audiences relate to the story as the production dovetailed with racial justice and environmental issues close to home.

“There was a conflict close to us in Minnesota with a pipeline being constructed on Indigenous people’s land,” Gretta says. “My friends were being arrested while we were performing. We were able to show on stage something so similar—something parallel that was happening on Ojibwe land. There were people at Macalester who didn’t know what was going on with the pipeline who suddenly wanted to.

“Also, the protests around police brutality in the Twin Cities felt connected to the scenes that showed the Peruvian military abusing their power. Black and brown bodies felt so disposable in those weeks leading up to the show. We embodied that in the work we were presenting.”

Gretta’s choice of study abroad programs is rooted in her heritage. She was born in New Mexico of Peruvian parents who moved the family back to Peru when Gretta was an infant. They lived there until she was 14, when they returned to the United States, but Gretta continued to search for a deeper understanding of her Indigenous ancestry.

“I felt a need to incorporate that part of myself into my academic formation,” she says. “SIT seemed like the right program to do that.”

Back in Peru with SIT, Gretta says, “I felt that I was finally learning what I had been longing to learn in all of my college courses. I was a Latin American Studies major and in my classes all I wanted to learn about was Peru, and in theater I felt distanced and absent from discussions because they felt very disconnected from what I cared about. The study abroad experience fed my soul in a way that was really needed and that I had been waiting for since I left Peru at age 14.”

On her program, Gretta says what she learned about agrarian reform and indentured slavery fueled her commitment to advance indigenous people’s movements for justice. “The conflict with a mining company…was happening when we were there. When I went to do my [Independent Study Project] I actually couldn’t even get past where I needed to go because there was a military presence, and it was too violent. That’s how alive the conflict was when I was studying it.”

Blocked from conducting her own interviews with women involved in the struggle, Gretta studied the research of local university students who had done extensive interviews with the women. As a theater and dance major, she says it felt natural to channel those voices into a musical production.

“We had been learning a lot about how Indigenous bodies of knowledge exist in an oral tradition. To me, theater in a large way is an exchange of knowledge, and it’s oral. I thought this was the best way I could connect to what was happening and to contribute to furthering their struggle.

“I knew Tia Maria would be over sooner or later, but it’s a struggle that keeps repeating and a cycle that Peruvians keep returning to. So, I wanted to cement and record it in a way that it could be referenced later to avoid the loss of historical memory that seems to happen in Peru.”

In drafting her play, which first took shape as her SIT Independent Study Project, Gretta originally intended for it to be performed in Spanish in Peru—which is still her goal.

While she works on finalizing her script for the New York production, Gretta is simultaneously revising the Spanish version with the dream of returning to Arequipa to present her play among the communities that inspired it.

Julia was born in the Apurimac region in the southern Andean mountains of Peru. She is a native Quechua speaker and learned her second language, Spanish, when she was 16. Political violence forced her to leave that region, and she migrated to Cuzco. Julia has worked with the program since 2010, performing administrative duties and supporting students and staff. In 2013, she became the coordinator in charge of rural homestays and field activities on Taquile Island.

Ana studied business administration at the National University of Cuzco and has a master’s degree in business administration and management from the University of Tarapaca, Chile. She works with students and local families to facilitate the homestay experience, handles program logistics, and assists the academic director in management of all program activities. Ana has more than 13 years of experience in NGO management, tourism, banks, and other entities, as well as six years managing study abroad and volunteer programs in Cuzco.

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A native of Cuzco, Dr. Alvarez received his undergraduate degree in anthropology from the National University of Cuzco, his master’s in social sciences with a focus in environmental management and development from the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLASCO), and his PhD in development studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He received doctoral fellowships at the National Centre of Competence in North-South Research in Geneva and the Russell E. Train Education for Nature program with the World Wildlife Fund. He also received the Exchange Legacy Lelong grant for social anthropology research from the National Center of Scientific Research in France.

Dr. Alvarez has written specialized articles for science publications abroad about Andean and Amazonian indigenous peoples, land governance, conservation, and protected areas in indigenous territories in Peru and has been a reviewer for various Latin American journals. He provides volunteer technical and scientific support to the Indigenous Federation of Madre de Dios in southeastern Peru on issues related to environmental governance, property rights, cultural landscapes, natural resource extraction, conservation of biodiversity in indigenous territories and democracy. In 2017, he was  nominated as an honorary member of the TICCA Consortium based in Geneva in recognition of his expertise in and activism regarding issues faced by indigenous peoples.

SIT Study Abroad Programs

• Peru: Indigenous Peoples and Globalization